Tuesday 19 April 2011

The lost stage of the Tour of Britain

Or why the Tour of Britain has never had a team time trial.


Today's announcement that the Tour of Britain is to have a split stage with a time trial is nothing new. It was meant to happen 12 years ago on the Prutour, but thanks to Royal intervention it never happened, and this year's stage to Caerphilly will be the closest the tour has come to Cardiff ever since.

Here's the story:

In 1999 I was working for Cardiff County Council's Leisure section. One day I was hauled into a meeting simply because I was known to be a racing cyclist. The meeting was with Mick Bennett and some other guy who were planning the route for the next edition of the Tour of Britain - then the Prutour. The idea was that there would be a split stage: a road stage coming in from Caerphilly way in the morning, and then they wanted an individual time trial stage in the afternoon. The problem was the route for the time trial - as a local cyclist surely I'd know a way into and out of Cardiff that wasnt going to cause much traffic chaos? I did, but that was quickly shot down by the Police inspector also in the meeting. The problem was that the time trial had to start in the same place as the road stage finished. If the road stage finished in the Bay, then the time trial could head up the dual carriageway and back - dead easy for road closures, but alas "too busy" for the police. Other options were floated: Mick Bennett liked the idea of going round Roath park lake, but this was too far away and the residents would have gone nuts.

Somehow the idea of a team time trial came up. I cant remember how, but it made much more sense given the logistics and road closures required for an individual TT. The next thing I ended up in a car with Mick and the other guy looking at routes into and out of the city. I suggested that the easiest way into and out of the city was along the Wentlooge flats which could get you into the Bay area relatively easily. Starting at Rumney/St Mellons, the route could go out to Newport, cut down onto the flats and back along Rover way and up to City Hall. It would have looked something like this:


Bike route 916749 - powered by Bikemap 


Mick was quite excited, even if the scenery wasnt to his taste, but it looked like a goer. But alas, it wasnt to be. Unbeknown to anyone, the day of the stage was already marked down for a royal visit - the Queen was coming to open the new National Assembly for Wales. There was going to be no Prutour for Cardiff this year and the stage ended up going to Swansea instead, whilst the ITT ended up in Portsmouth.

The council were told that the tour would visit the following year, but by then the Prutour was no more. The city was to have hosted a stage finish the previous year, but that stage was cancelled after a police motorcylist was killed whilst closing the roads. Since then, the new Tour of Britain hasn't come to Cardiff either: the stage finish into Caerphilly will be the closest it has been, probably since either the Milk Race or one of the stages of the Kelloggs tour.

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